Feeding a baby can be extremely messy. When using a traditional highchair for feeding, the person feeding the seated infant usually must handfeed the infant holding the jar of food in one hand, while spoon feeding the baby with the other hand. This handholding of the food jar is necessary since the infant has a tendency to reach across the tray width, and knock the objects within their reach. Knocked down jars of baby food can be extremely messy to clean up, as well as resulting in wasted unusable food spilled out from the jar. Additionally, the person feeding the infant must use both of their hands at all times during the feeding process.
Additionally, the feeding of infants also requires a baby bottle filled with milk, juice and the like, to be used. For similar reasons, the baby bottles cannot be temporary stored on the existing tray since the bottles are within easy reach of the infant and can be knocked down creating additional messes and wasted liquids. The problem comes into play when the person feeding the infant must temporarily place the bottle somewhere if they are going to start hand feeding the infant using a handheld food jar, bowl and handheld spoon.
Similar problems occur with other chairs having trays such as infant booster chairs, stroller type chairs, stationary and movable activity chairs, and the like.
To obviate the problems above, the person feeding the infant has had to temporarily place the bottle, food jar, and/or spoon on floor surfaces, adjacent tables and/or countertops. However, this temporary solution creates other problems. In addition to taking up additional space, these surfaces need to be completely clean (bacteria and bug free) to store these objects, and generally require an extra cleanup after the jars, bottles, and spoons have been placed on these surfaces.
Various proposals have been made over the years but fail to solve the problems presented above. U.S. Patents Des. 208,317 to Broder; 3,143,374 to Carboni; 3,475,052 to Kaposi; and 4,548,440 to Meslin et al. each describe attaching small plate trays to existing highchair trays. However, each of these references requires placing the small plate trays on top of the existing tray putting the small plate trays within easy reach of the infants, and not solving any of the problems presented above.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,711,872 to Lampke describes a telescoping arm with a clamp end for use with baby crib railings. However, Lampke's clamp cannot be used to attach their device over and about the top raised lip edges and bottom of the tray edge on traditional highchair and stroller trays. Furthermore, the arm and clamp mechanism can be potentially harmful to the infant if left unattended.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,660,743 to Carroll; 1,937,994 to Taylor; and 2,707,141 to Witter each describe tray attachment devices for attaching to the edges of tables. However, none of these patents has a clamp that allows the device to simultaneously wrap about the top raised lip edge and bottom edge on traditional highchairs and stroller trays. Using these devices would create unstable tray attachments. Furthermore, these devices would leave the food jars and bottles at the same height as that of the existing trays themselves. Thus, objects stored on these devices would still be within reach of seated infants.
Other patents of interest that also fail to overcome all the deficiencies to the prior art include U.S. Pat. Nos. Des. 303,454 to Morales et al.; 3,338,628 to Evans; 3,904,041 to Medgebow; 4,403,786 to Ulics; 4,854,638 to Marcus et al.; 4,858,796 to Roth; 5,106,046 to Rowles et al.; 5,148,755 to Morales; 5,211,607 to Fermaglish et al.; 5,244,175 to Frankel; 5,257,765 to Halle; 5,279,452 to Huynh; and 5,996,507 to Joseph.
The Morales '454 and '755 patents respectively describe a “food tray for use in vehicles”, title and “utility tray for attachment to a wall, or a like”, title, and are not for attaching to tray edges on high chairs and the like, and fail to overcome all the problems described above.